Canada’s long slide
In decades past, Canadians had reason to feel proud of the role our country played in the world. Under Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien, we were a strong presence at the United Nations and on the Security Council, we deployed peacekeepers, championed the International Criminal Court, gave generously to foreign aid, fought apartheid and battled ethnic cleansing.
But Stephen Harper’s vision for Canada’s role in the world has never been an ambitious one, and the numbers prove it.
Apart from losing our Security Council seat, Canada has slipped far behind other industrial countries on Harper’s watch, in terms of what we spend pulling our weight abroad. In fairness to the Conservatives, the slide didn’t begin with them. It dates back to the Liberals’ time in office. But the trend has continued and reached a new low point under the Harper Tories and it is hobbling Canada’s ability to help ease suffering in the world and contribute to global stability.
The gap has grown so wide that whoever wins the current federal election will face a hard slog restoring Canada’s currency on the international stage.
Anew research paper for Open Canada, an online foreign affairs forum for the Canadian International Council, concludes that Ottawa has become a “free rider” when it comes to spending on defence and foreign aid, two key benchmarks of a nation’s global engagement. If that sounds harsh, consider the numbers:
Canada spends about $19 billion on the military and $5 billion on foreign aid, for a total of $24 billion. That’s roughly 1.2 per cent of our economic output measured as gross domestic product, the report’s authors Robert Greenhill and Meg McQuillan point out. Back in 1990, we spent relatively twice as much: 2.4 per cent.
Our current spending makes us shirkers compared to our partners in the Group of Seven. We’re tied in the G7 for last place with Japan, spending 40 per cent less last year than the G7 average. We’re also last in a peer group of mid-size economies that includes Australia, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
“We have been laggards for years: today, we rank last,” the report concludes. “We are the least committed to global engagement of our international peer group.” That wasn’t always the case. Between 1975 and 1995, Canada’s spending on both defence and aid was far more ambitious under both Progressive Conservative and Liberal governments.
Granted, the Cold War is over. But any “peace dividend” has long since been exhausted, and the calls on our military keep coming. Canadian troops have been deployed to thwart genocide in the Balkans, fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban, deter piracy and battle the Islamic State. And while the Harper government has invested heavily in mother and child health care abroad, that good work has been more than offset by aid cuts elsewhere.
Canadians can usefully debate where best to put money, into the military or aid. But if we want to play a serious role in securing a more prosperous, stable world for the next generation, we will need to dig deeper. What would it take to bring us back up to the G7 average? We’d need to boost spending by $13 billion or more a year, a50-per-cent hike. And that isn’t on any of the major party agendas.
While Canada’s drift to the bottom hasn’t stirred much notice in the election campaign, it should be on the new government’s agenda once the dust settles. We have catching up to do.
Canada has slipped far behind other industrial countries on Stephen Harper’s watch